Page 1 of The Burning
Prologue
Kael
The sea of black clothing makes my eyes hurt. It’s been a while since I’ve been around such a uniformed crowd. I was so used to the camouflage I wore daily for years that even though I’m out of the Army, I still look for the camo out in the civilian world. Sometimes I miss not having to think about my choice of clothes every day. When I take one of my freshly dry-cleaned jackets off the hanger, I remembered my ACU jacket that had fabric so stiff from caked-in sand and dirt that it crinkled as we marched for hours in the Georgia heat. My hand reaches under my shirt to touch the dog tags hanging around my neck. For comfort? For punishment?
I’m not one ofthosesoldiers who wear them as a prideful decoration or to get free drinks at local bars; I wear them because the weight of the metal on my chest keeps my feet on the ground. I’ll probably never take them off. This morning at the coffee shop, I noticed Karina’s eyes scanning my neckline and I knew she was looking to see if I had taken them off yet. The answer will always be no.
“It’s a little cold in here,” my mom says, as I drop the dog tag and bring my hands to my lap.
“Do you want my jacket?” I ask her. She shakes her head.
“They have to keep the body cool or it will start to smell,” a familiar voice says.
“Still a sick fuck, I see.” I stand up and hug Silvin. His body’s a lot thinner than the last time I saw him. His jawline sticks out like the villain of an action film.
“Never gonna change, either.” He hits my arm.
My mom looks at him with disapproval. “You better quit that.” She hits him a little harder than he hit me.
“How many times have I heard that?” Silvin hugs my mom and she breaks into a smile.
She always liked him the few times they met, despite the fact that he could be an offensive prick with a crass sense of humor. His beyond dark sense of humor kept us all laughing through the lowest times in our lives, though, so I always liked him, too.
“How are you, man?” I ask casually, even though I know he’s probably hurting more than most of the people in the church right now. Like I had been at the last one.
He clears his throat and blinks his red eyes. A puff of air blows from his cheeks before he answers, “I’m good. I, uhm—I’m good. I’d rather be in Vegas playing slots with a porn star andhermoney.” He laughs awkwardly.
“Wouldn’t we all,” I joke back with him, careful not to add weight to his mind. Sometimes it’s better to stay on the surface where you can stay numb.
“Come sit down with us? Or do you already have a seat?” I ask him.
“It’s not a fucking concert, Martin,” he says and laughs, coming to sit down next to my mom.
Even though it’s masking deep sadness, Silvin’s twisted laughter is the only inkling of happiness in the whole church. The ceiling is practically dripping with grief. The kind of sad that just bleeds into you and never washes away. It shows on you. The weight of everything you’re carrying just flows through your blood and sits right on top of your shoulders.
Silvin sighs and leans back onto the wooden pew heavily, trying to give it some of the weight inside of him. His dark eyes stare ahead, lost in some memory that refuses to go away, denying him any chance of peace. He’s too young to look so old. He’s aged drastically since we all called him “Baby Face” in our best Southern accents. He’s from Mississippi and had looked about fifteen during our first deployment, but now he looks older than me.
Baby Face had grown up a lot since he’d had chunks of what looked like raw tuna thump against his face as they fell from the sky. It took my brain another explosion to digest the horror of realizing the plague of chunks falling were pieces of human flesh, not fish. I was standing so close that a finger with a wedding band on it landed against the toe of my combat boot. Johnson’s face had changed when he turned to look at him and realized that his battle buddy Cox was no longer standing there. I saw something in his eyes, the smallest gleam burning out as he lifted his weapon from his waist and kept on moving. He never mentioned him again and after that he sat in silence as Cox’s pregnant widow cried at his funeral.
Come to think of it, this funeral feels eerily similar.
I look around for a clock. Isn’t it almost time to start? I want to get this over with before I actually have to think about what we’re doing here. Funerals are all the same, at least in the military; outside of it, I haven’t been to one since I was a kid. Since I left for basic training, I’ve been to at least ten funerals. That’s ten times that I’ve sat silently in a wooden pew and scanned the faces of soldiers staring ahead, the straight line of their lips well-practiced. Ten funeral homes full of shuffling kids who don’t understand life, let alone death, crawling at their parents’ feet. Ten times that sobs broke out in the crowd. Luckily, only half of the deceased soldiers were married with families, so that meant only five sobbing wives whose lives were ripped apart and changed forever.
I often wondered when the calls would stop coming. After how many years would we stop gathering like this? Would it continue until we were all old and gray? Would Silvin come to my funeral or would I go to his first? I always went, as did Johnson, whom I spot out of the corner of my eye. Stanson, too, who is holding his newborn son. He’s still in the Army, but even the few of us who are no longer active duty still come. I flew to Washington State a few months ago for a guy I barely knew, but Mendoza loved.
There are more people today than usual. Then again, this dead soldier was liked more than most of us. I couldn’t think about his name, or say it in my head. I didn’t want to do that to myself, or to my mom, who I picked up in Riverdale and drove with me to Atlanta. She always liked him. Everyone did.
“Who’s that lady there?” My mom coughs, her finger pointed at a woman I don’t recognize.
“No clue, Ma,” I whisper to her.
Silvin’s haunted eyes are closed now. I look away from him.
“I’m sure I know that woman—” she insists.
A man in a suit walks on stage. Must be time.
I cut her off. “Ma. They’re about to start.”
